Broken Ground

by Wendell Berry

A young writer whose poem November Twenty Six, Nineteen Hundred Sixty Three, with drawings by Ben Shahn published in the spring of 1964, was an immediate best seller, offers here a particularly satisfying first book of poetry characterized by quiet strength and a serenity based on a compassionate understanding of the human condition. A countryman born and reared, Wendell Berry is predominantly a pastoral poet. He writes about the elemental things, life and death and love, turning constantly to the natural world for his imagery, he writes of snow and rain and the waters of the earth, of birds and blossoming tees, of country sounds and the qualities of
“The river runs to noon forever.
The clear light rings with bees.”
Particularly in a number of extended poems and poem sequences, the mood is reflective, musing, elegiac. But there is humor, too, and even an occasional satiric thrust or flash of anger. Subtlety lies beneath an immediate, forthright simplicity, an apparent effortlessness may initially conceal the fact that this is highly disciplined writing. Instantly appealing as they are, Wendell Berry’s poems gain added stature as the reader comes to know them better and perceive fully their beauty and their unobtrusive power.

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Wendell Berry was a conservationist, farmer, essayist, novelist, professor of English and poet. Closely identified with rural Kentucky, Berry developed many of his agrarian themes in the early essays of The Gift of Good Land (1981) and The Unsettling of America (1977). His attention to the culture and economy of rural communities is also found in the novels and stories of Port William, such as A Place on Earth (1967), Jayber Crow (2000), and That Distant Land (2004).

Berry was an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of the National Humanities Medal and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He was also a 2013 Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and, from 2014 to his death, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Berry was named the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. On January 28, 2015, he became the first living writer to be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.

abridged from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

"But I was so much older then,
I’m younger than that now”—Bob Dylan

The words of this Dylan song have been floating around in my head ever since I finished reading Wendell Berry’s first collection of poetry, The Broken Ground (1964). Berry’s later work shares many of its themes—the passing of the seasons, death and life, the importance of where you are and what you do, the farms on the hills and the river that runs below—but the later poetry, whether it be spoken by your average Port William resident or the Mad Farmer himself, is vigorous, didactic, and prophetic in tone. It may mourn death and celebrate life, but—even in its elegies—it is rarely meditative and elegaic, like the volume before me. The Broken Ground sounds like an old man’s book, written in a sleepy old-fashioned free-verse--even though it was published by a man who has just turned thirty.

It begins with an elegy for his dead grandfather, a poem which commences in winter and snow, and, although it concludes in the spring, it still carries the chill of winter with it. Perhaps the finest poem in the collection is the dramatic monologue “Boone,” spoken by the old Daniel Boone who—unlike Tennyson’s Ulysses, an aged explore determined to discover new lands—is content to die in this “final house,” having learned that “the search withholds the joy from what is found and that “there are no arrivals.”

Broken Ground was published in the year Berry purchased a farm near Port Royal, Kentucky, a place which has been home to the Berry clan since the end of the Revolutionary War. He had been teaching at New York University, but he abandoned the slow academic climb in order to work as a farmer, like his fathers before him.

The smart people told him that, as a young writer, he was committing literary suicide, but he knew where his place was and what his work was, and he went. The rural life, formerly a subject for nostalgia, now became his life. Like Boone, he had reached his “final house,” but unlike the old explorer (whose house was death) Berry had completed his journey to the place and the work he was born for. He would soon discover a new, vigorous, prophetic voice springing up from this “broken ground.”

I will conclude this review with three poems I like from The Broken Ground that failed to make it into Wendell Berry: New Collected Poems. All three are worth a look, and probably a little hard to come by.

AN ARCHITECTURE

Like a room the clear stanza
of birdson opens among the noises
of motors and breakfasts.

Among the light’s beginnings,
lifting broken grey of the night’s
end, the bird hastens to his song

as to a place, a room commenced
at the end of sleep. Around
him his singing is entire.


A FIT OF WINTER

The body, exhumed from sleep,
is strange to its waking
—a perch for the eyes.

Bells stroke the syllables
of another language.
In the night it rained.

After the shedding of petals
there’s left the abstract
dry fist of seed.

What it may have meant
held out against the asking.


THE MORNING BLUE

Over the roofs and long shadows
and new-leafed trees, the
shingling of voices and engines:
a perfect ocean patiently
opening and shining. Birds,
gables, journeys, clouds, trees
take their odd sure places in it.
Here is what the night has turned to.

[Tom Quinn · Rating 2 out of 5]

So out of the course of a long and meandering conversation with fellow Goodreader Tyler V. came the recommendation to pick up something by Mr. Wendell Berry, Kentucky's famed poet-slash-environmental-activist and well-decorated author of some renown. It is pretty far outside my wheelhouse, being primarily a science-fiction fan myself and more prone to picking books about the grand sweeping concepts that make us all the same and not especially fond of regional authors who focus on the particulars of one specific place. I grew up in Chicago and resented the many, many units my public schools taught on Carl Sandburg, to say nothing of the dreadful "Cowboy Poetry" lessons my ex used to have to teach after we moved to Wickenburg, AZ. So left to my own devices I would have never come across Berry's work. But nonetheless I checked out two titles of his from my university library, one of poetry and one of prose. After all, if we're not taking other readers up on their recommendations then we're not getting the full benefit of this site, let alone that of the powerful force of literature as a means of human interconnection.

Now, I don't care for poems but even I must admit to being moved early on by some very powerful pieces in here. The nature imagery is crystal clear and evocative, and a good elegy always stirs up something deep and profound. But Berry's shorter poems did not make nearly as strong an impact on me. Still, reading this in tandem with Berry's nonfiction essays was an especially rewarding experience. The verse lent an emotional core to the man, sort of an intimate tour of his inner workings, which coupled well with the essays to amplify the meaning of both.

2.5 stars out of 5. I really enjoyed the first two poems, but the shorter pieces did not grab me at all (which is likely to be attributed to my personal feelings than any fault in the poems themselves).

[Jeffrey (Akiva) Savett · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those books of poetry which, as a poet, leave me in awe and anger. Awe of his incredible felicity and inventiveness with language, anger that I didn't write these poems myself. As C.K. Williams wrote in a recent poem, poets are wasting their time if they're not reading poems which leave them "whacked." So okay. I feel successfully whacked.

Berry's ability to play both pure imagist and brilliant symbolist is astounding. He's often called a "nature poet," and while many of these poems are indeed OF nature, they are still about things that us city and suburb dwellers live everyday: fear of death, plans which never get fulfilled, time which is always too short, spouses whom we hold close in sleep.

This is simply delightful. Read on...

[Kent · Rating 5 out of 5]

This full collection is so beholden to mortality, to the scope of life, to larger implications of knowing life and giving voice to them, to knowing the limits of human knowledge among the natural world they inhabit, especially given the human bias to make humans the center of nature, so that the full fruitfulness of nature, the complexity, the elaboration, the ambivalence to humans being active or present within nature is never fully realized in their singular lives. This is Berry’s occupation. And it takes so many forms. And those multiple forms is what consistently surprises me as I read though the book. For instance, many times the poems suddenly reverse the trope of morning. Yes, morning comes new to the day. But it’s not new in the sense that night was the absence of light. Or night was the absence of activity. To think along these lines is just one more of the humans’ self-involved perspective on the world. And the poems nudge the reader against that.

And maybe what impresses me in this book is how Berry embraces this limitation. As he highlights the presumptive stance humans take to nature, he also plays on the human impulse to make known its place among nature. Whether it’s the musician playing to an empty station of the Métro or it’s a passerby singing a tune that is both striking and memorable to the poet, humans are made both annoyingly curtailed in their view of nature. But isn’t that the position of all animals? Is kind of where the poems go.

[Soraya Keiser · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up because my dear friend Sarah Bakeman sent me a poem from this collection. How delightful!! It’s interesting to think of Wendell Berry so young when writing these compared to his wise and long canon of today. As someone with access to basically every piece of literature written by Berry in existence thanks to my dad, I should be taking advantage of that opportunity more.

[Kavanaugh Kohls · Rating 4 out of 5]

Verse best read with a view.

Even in the early stages of his career, Berry's understanding of the natural world- of life and death and grief and hope- is undeniable. You can read this knowing nothing about the man, and finish the book with the certainty that Berry's sanctuary was the soil.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

My passage grew into that country
like a vine, as if remaining
when I'd gone, responsive to the season's
change, boding a continuance of eyes;
not the place or the distance
made it known to me,
but the direction so ardently obeyed,
preserving my advance
on the edge of virgin light,
broken by my shadow's stride;
I wouldn't recognize the way back.

We held a country in our minds
which, unpossessed, allowed
the encroachment of our dreams;
our vision descended like doves
at morning on valleys still blue
in the extremity of hills
until we moved in a prodigy of reckonings,
sustaining in the toil of a journey
the rarity of our desire.


This is Berry’s first full poetry book published in 1964, and you can see the beginning of his lifelong love of place, land, light, nature, home, words. He has written a lot of elegies and requiems, and I think that taught him how to write about nature, or perhaps the opposite, finding the connections and resonances between a person and nature, the songs, even.

THE GATHERING

We came there at the end of spring,
climbing out of the hill's shadow
in the evening,

the light
leaned quiet on the trees,
we'd foreseen no words;
after nightfall when the coals of our fire
contained all that was left
of vision, my journey relinquished me
to sleep;

kindling in the uneasy
darkness where we
broached our coming to the place we'd dreamed
the dying green of those valleys
began to live.

My passage grew into that country
like a vine, as if remaining
when I'd gone, responsive to the season's
change, boding a continuance of eyes;
not the place or the distance
made it known to me,
but the direction so ardently obeyed,
preserving my advance
on the edge of virgin light,
broken by my shadow's stride;
I wouldn't recognize the way back.

ELEGY

Spring tangles shadow and light,
Branches of trees
Knit vision and wind.
The shape of the wind is a tree
Bending, spilling its birds.
From the cloud to the stone
The rain stands tall,
Columned into his darkness.
Water over blanched bones
Jangles in a forest of roots.
The church hill heals our father in.
Our remembering moves from a different place.

4.
At noon the wind lays.
The trees stand on the banks
With their shadows beside them
Undisturbed, the leaves quiet
In their spear shapes. The sky
Lies flat on the water, blue
On green, their colors together.
In green water two white clouds
Move deeply.

The horizons of this valley,
The folded hills
Have the breadth of an eyelid.
Entering my eyes, the sky
Is no larger than a coin.
The point of the sun
In my eyes
Will become a darkness.

5
A broad flower
Lying on its green curving stem
Is this valley
It is a flower of durable blooming
Complete in no season
But in its moments full-formed
As a bird flying.

DIAGON

…
Of sumac and oak
Thickets lighted with goldenrod
Winter brings no closing
White trunks
Of the sycamores
Stand in the snow
The days of this summer
Are many-colored on the hills
Red with the slant light
Of evenings and mornings
Green in the dry light of noon
Entering blue of distance
Where the sky bends on them
They lean toward the sun
At night the flower is black
Or night is another flower
Blooming on day shape
Past the sleep of lovers
In the darkened houses
Its blooming changes
Its shape is the shape
Of all rains.

THE RIVER VOYAGERS

Where the light's bells ring
Morning on the river,
Waking the town to its round of spires
And burials, is only half
The world. This very light shapes a country
Green of leaf and river
Within the sleep of the dead voyagers,
Or their death also
Is a river where morning returns
And is welcome.
The scarlet bird chanting
Its renewal in a tree of shade
As constantly sings
To their earthen unhearing ears.

BOONE

Beyond this final house
I'll make no journeys, that is
the nature of this place,
I came here old; the house contains
the shade of its walls,
a fire in winter; I know
still

from what direction to expect the wind;
I move in the descent
of days from what was dreamed
to what remains.
In the stillness of this single place
where I'm resigned to die
I'm not free of journeys:
one eye watches while the other sleeps
-every day is a day's remove
from what I knew.

We held a country in our minds
which, unpossessed, allowed
the encroachment of our dreams;
our vision descended like doves
at morning on valleys still blue
in the extremity of hills
until we moved in a prodigy of reckonings,
sustaining in the toil of a journey
the rarity of our desire.

At the coming of winter
the birds obey the leviathan flock
that moves them south,
a rhythm of the blood that survives the cold
in pursuit of summer;
and the sun, innocent of time
as the blossom is innocent of ripeness,
faithful to solstice, returns-
and the flocks return;
the season recognizes them.

If it were possible now
I'd make myself submissive
to the weather
as an old tree, without retrospect
of winter, blossoming,
grateful for summers hatched from thrushes' eggs
in the speckled thickets

-obedient

to darkness,
be innocent of my dying.

NINE VERSES OF THE SAME SONG
I
the ear finely attuned
to the extravagant music
of yellow pears ripening
in the scrolled light
of orchards as if the world
were perfect
hears the cicada burst its shell

hear also the resounding actual
music of wood and bow

played alone
sounds of the flesh without soul

like the austere strained-for
music of pure soul

music of the unplayed strings
imaged in the mind's ear

it is a more mingled music
we are fated to

a speech breaking categories
to confront its objects

rapt cicadas thrumming
the ear's meat

beyond this light
and darkness are the same

[Sanjuro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Berry's first collection of poetry is stellar, setting the stage for the themes and images that will be prominent in all of his writing throughout his 60+ year writing career. He writes of farm life, the wild, feral instincts, the nature of community, the connection between people and place, and the nature of death; he uses these themes to encapsulate much of what it means to live well upon the earth, and the way we might recall and judge a life lived when we near the end. He was still quite young when he published this collection, but the wisdom is already there. The book is a bit darker than some of his later poems, but the reflections are largely consistent with his worldview as described in his writing over time.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable. Agree with another reviewer that while many poems are OF (I.e. use) nature for symbols and images, the meaning of many if not all the poems is intensely human, not about nature itself.

Favorites include Boone, which inspired a choral work (on which I'm in process); "Sparrow," which seems prophetic about vapid consumption and its worth; and "The Guest," which, spoiler, ISN'T about a guest but the steps we take to avoid helping people. Wrecked me. Wow.

There's a few moments where I thought, "Huh, either I don't get it or he's still pretty young here," hence the four stars. Recommend to fans of Berry, tired city- dwellers, tired suburbia-dwellers, tired rural folk, and people who want to get into more contemporary poetry. Best enjoyed with frost on the windowpane.

[Matt Sheffield · Rating 2 out of 5]

Who am I to judge poetry?

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this!! Pretty abstract compared to what I’m usually drawn to. But the ones I could grasp were stunning.

[jovan]

Simple, no tricks. Language moves languidly, like time. He thinks about death a lot

[Elizabeth]

THE PLAN (1964)

My old friend, the owner
of a new boat, stops by
to ask me to fish with him,

and I say I will—both of us
knowing that we may never
get around to it, it may be

years before we’re both
idle again on the same day.
But we make a plan, anyhow,

in honor of friendship
and the fine spring weather
and the new boat

and our sudden thought
of the water shining
under the morning fog.

*Good reminder. Striving to be more intentional. Make the plan. Do the thing. Be with my people. So help me God.

**Note to self. Having read thru the entirety of WB’s fiction twice, it’s time to intentionally journey through his poetry.

***New Collected Poems (2012)

[Jeff Morgan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've read one of Wendell Berry's novels (Jayber Crow) and several of his poems. I've enjoyed pretty much everything I've read. Therefore, I was quite excited when I saw this collection.

Unfortunately, Berry doesn't seem to be at his poetic peak this early in his career (1958). The whole 56-page collection can be read quickly. There's nothing really that stands out. Life, death, rivers, rain, snow, blue, green, birds, sun, night.

[Rena Sherwood · Rating 1 out of 5]

Never heard of Wendell Berry? There's a good reason why not. Although The Broken Ground has occasional flashes of good word-painting, most of it is obtuse the point of incomprehensibility. Color me nutty, but I think poems should have some sort of a point. These poems may have points to them but I did not connect with them enough to give a damn about figuring out what they could possibly mean.

[Jordan Kinsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

These poems are dark.